In just two years that number has jumped from two to ten.
“Salmon is totally dominant,” said Martin Langaas, Director of Air Freight and Traffic Development in Avinor, the state-owned limited company that operates most of the civil airports in Norway.
“Two years ago there were two freight airlines that flew six weekly departures. Two years later, we have ten freight airlines that carry fish with over 20 weekly departures to Asia,” added Martin Langaas as reported in Romerikes Blad.
Increase
According to Langaas, both the capacity and the number of tonnes of goods that fly out of the country have increased significantly. By 2017, a total of 90,000 tonnes of seafood was transported through as air freight to the value of EUR 525 million.
He said that 70 percent of the cargo contained seafood and of that “salmon is totally dominant.”
“Oslo Airport as a freight hub is important for value added work throughout Norway and the entire coast, from north to west. Norway is dependent on Gardermoen (Oslo Airport) delivering capacity and punctuality for the seafood industry. Norway’s ability to ensure the competitiveness of Norwegian seafood is about quality and time to market, where Gardermoen has a very important role,” said Langaas.
Flying out north
But it is not only from Oslo airport that’ll fly out the country’ famed export. This month it was confirmed that from summer 2019 there will be a salmon cargo freight plane between the Northern Harstad/Narvik Airport and China.
Langaas in Avinor isn’t sceptical about flying fish from all the way from the north of Norway, but he said it requires more willingness from exporters to accept it will cost more to fly it out from there. Nevertheless, he believes that other airports do not have the same competitiveness as Gardermoen, indicating that capital’s airport will be home to the new seafood centre.
